Gravity
by Shimegami-chan
Summary: One-shot. "My breath was coming in short gasps — it might have been fear or the thin air so high above the city, or the adrenaline rush of being up here, above the world with him." DannyxSam.


I thought, "Hey, I should write a Valentine's one-shot, I haven't done that in a couple of years." Then I thought, "Hey, I should write _three_ Valentine's one-shots, and forego sleep!!" :DD

Of course this year I could not sit in my Contemporary Canadian Poetry (or other English-study equivalent) class and use it as a distraction. Instead I'm sitting here at 5:30 a.m., half-dead but keeping at it. I wanted to write one for each of my dear galfriends (okay, maybe just three of you, because I will seriously die soon). This one is for** Akoya **and she picked the coupling; thanks to Neko for the prompt.

Oh yeah, first person. _Seriously_. When was the last time? Good lord.

* * *

Gravity

_by Shimegami-chan_

* * *

When _it_ first happened we were all too panicked to think about the potential gains, too concerned to say anything that might be taken negatively by him, because he was emotional, because he was upset. Because when Danny became emotional and upset he had a newfound tendency to sink through the floor and would come scrabbling upward, cursing a blue streak and calling for the sort of help that we, of course, could not possibly answer. His intangible arms slipped right through ours.

But that was in the first few days. Before he learned to fly.

When he grudgingly admitted that he was starting to gain some measure of control over these strange new powers, I breathed easier for the first time in days. It wasn't that I felt responsible for the accident, not yet; that niggle of guilt would come later and was thankfully quickly washed away. Somehow the irrational fear that he would disappear into the earth and never emerge faded when he came to me excited about his newest ability, the terrifying and wonderful power of _flight_. When he told me this he seemed flushed and breathless, and I stared at him almost unhearing, marveling at how decidedly human his ghostly form seemed just then. He was like a kid in a candy store, recounting every detail until I could imagine it with amazing clarity myself; Amity Park from so high up that you could only see its vast sprawl and not just the insignificant cogs of society that moved through it. From above, perhaps you could see _beyond_ the city and well into the beautiful scenery outside of it, the forests and lakes I had witnessed from the windows of airplanes on vacation when I was young, but without the murky glass and steel blocking the light and the wind. I imagined it so vividly and with such concentration that Danny worriedly called my name to bring me back down to Earth.

"That sounds...really great," was the lame recovery from my daydream, a little irritated with myself for having spaced out so thoroughly. His face was a mask of concern behind the shock of white hair, and he tried to lay his hand on my shoulder, growling under his breath when it passed right through me. The feeling caused me to shiver.

"But hey, if I've got the flying thing down pat, eventually I'll figure out how _not_ to go intangible at the worst possible times," he offered hopefully, hastily retracting his hand. He was back to being completely visible, and he glanced around the room quickly before transforming into _himself_ again, the white light still a bit blinding as it overtook his body. He was back to being my wide-eyed, slightly-goofy-looking best friend.

The superhero look was starting to suit him, though, I had to admit.

"Listen, Sam, I've gotta run. I just wanted to tell you about it." He grinned at me.

"Just _knock_ on the window first next time," I replied dryly, and a blush coloured his cheeks. He escaped quickly and I heard him hurry down the stairs, leaving as casually if not more conspicuously than he had come. My parents would probably wonder how he'd gotten in, I thought with some amusement, and I fell backwards onto the bed, legs hanging off the edge with feet dangling.

What, I supposed, was it _really_ like? To feel weightless, with nothing but the air pressing against you, shunning the gravity that had kept you grounded for so long? Danny was lucky, I decided at that moment, and it was the first time I had really come to acknowledge any of the accident's effects as beneficial. All of this, these ghostly abilities, they made Danny unique in amazing ways, but the power of _flight_ was the first that truly struck me. He wasn't just half-ghost, he had somehow managed to transcend humankind without ever sacrificing his humanity. It was stunning, I thought; it was beautiful.

And I was jealous.

From that moment on I had to begrudgingly accept this. Danny, who shunned his powers, had something I wanted that I could never obtain. I didn't even want to mention it to him for fear that he'd laugh at how badly I wanted to be up there too, taking it all in like some benevolent Creator looking down thoughtfully on his world.

I didn't ever say it, but somehow, because he was Danny and I was Sam, he knew.

Tappings on my window no longer frightened me; he came often without warning, looking for a place to hide from stray ghosts. He hadn't learned yet to control ecto-blasts and the Fenton Thermos was still a week in the future, unknown to either of us as the most effective ghost-fighting tool we'd ever wield. He hadn't even consciously made the decision to use his powers to fight other ghosts yet; these things were about to happen, but Danny was blissfully unaware. He simply fled when his powers went beserk, and I assumed this was one of those times, as he knocked on my second-floor window from the outside just past five in the morning, his soft glow just slightly dimmer than the moonlight.

I opened the window, though I wasn't sure if I needed to (I had just as much trouble as he did telling whether or not intangibility/invisibility was actually under his control), waving a hand to acknowledge that he could enter, and was so dazed from sleep that it didn't register right away when Danny Phantom entered and swept me up into his arms, bridal-style. I yelped and almost-struggled, but before the words issued from my mouth he had easily hefted my weight and launched himself from the windowsill, to my utter shock.

"_Danny_!" I cried. We were out in the night air and my slippers were tumbling to the ground but we weren't falling, somehow we had clawed free of the gravity that held everyone else down and were rising up, up, so high I had to squeeze my eyes shut and throw my arms around his neck. He faltered a bit, slowing, but I felt him brace himself and reflexively take an airless breath as he held me closer. "Danny, oh my God, _what_ are you doing!?" I murmured into the chilled fabric of his hazmat suit, certain he could feel my fright and embarassed about it.

"Shh," was all he would say, and: "Don't worry, you'll be fine." I wanted to say that I was _not_ fine, and he seemed to anticipate this. "Trust me."

"Okay," I muttered, hoping he could see my scowling face under the tangled mess of black hair that whipped around it. A handful of seconds into the bizarre adventure I finally realized it - we weren't just floating, we were _flying_. Somehow Danny was easily supporting me in a way that truly made me feel weightless; perhaps some ghostly power administered by contact? It seemed as though his potential was endless. Still I couldn't open my eyes for fear of what I might see, or what I _couldn't_ see, all those details of the city that were lost as one drew further and further away. I wanted to, though; I wanted to experience all of this, no matter how much of a shock it would initially be.

Danny saved me the trouble, coming to a slow stop. "Sam, you're missing it," he chastised.

"Missing what?" My eyes flew open and there _it_ was. The sun was beginning its lazy ascent on the horizon, spreading like liquid fire over the houses and lawns of Amity Park. "Oh..."

"This is what you wanted, right?"

My grip tightened slightly; somehow, he'd known. I didn't need to look at Danny's face to see his satisfied smirk. "Yeah."

My breath was coming in short gasps, it might have been fear or the thin air so high above the city, but I prefer to remember it as the effect of the scenery on me, of the adrenaline rush of being up here, above the world with him. I wanted to keep this moment forever, and strived to commit each detail to memory, almost missing the way the light crawled up our legs and arms and insistently searched our faces. I glanced upward just in time to see my companion's features relax slightly. "You know," I said, aware of the catch in my usually-confident voice, which had been reduced to a whisper, up here where there was no wind and Danny's face was so close, so close. "For things like this, being a ghost might not be half bad."

"Yeah." A pause. The sunlight softened the green glow of his eyes. "Not so bad at all."

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_-end-_

A/N: OMGZ happy Valentine's Day Akoya! Now to write one for mrit. -rolls up sleeves-


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